Carl Sandburg High school has an overwhelming amount of students experiencing the 21st century illness, so called, “sleep deprivation”. Students are lacking on hours of sleep every single night as a result of stress, too much homework, and not maintaining balance between everything in life.

Lack of sleep has a lot of negative effects on high school students. Students have trouble focusing in class, learning new materials, and retaining old information.

Alex Serrano, a senior, said, “Being sleep deprived takes away from my focus in class, my grades slip, and when though it’s just the beginning of the semester, it really makes a difference.

“Just thinking about it, everyone knows that when a person sleeps less at night they have more trouble focusing, thinking, and simply going through the motions of a daily routine.

“I feel like I can’t pay attention in classes,” said senior Suah Yun.

Sandburg also has a large group of students who participate in sports, clubs, extracurricular activities, jobs, and in addition take on difficult schedules with advanced placement classes. Taking this into account, along with personal issues, and responsibilities at home and with one’s family, sleep sometimes seems out of the question on an average school night.

Jennifer Rosmus, a senior, said, “Trying to juggle school, family, and responsibilities makes it hard to sleep at night and when I don’t sleep, I know I make simple and foolish mistakes on tests and assignments that I wouldn’t have made it I had the right amount of sleep.”

Additionally, all the stress of students waiting for responses from colleges and making decisions or committing to a school makes it hard to fall asleep at night. It just all adds up to one big sleepless mess.

Colleen Lynch said, “With after school activities and all now, it’s hard because I feel the sleep catching up on me and it’s harder to fall asleep at night since I’m always staying up so late.”

Not to mention the stress every person just goes through on a daily basis worrying about school, sports, and personal issues. It’s no surprise that so many high school students are sleep deprived.

When a person’s body is deprived of sleep and proper rest, it can lead to to illnesses and exhaustion. Students and teachers alike can get sick faster if they are sleep deprived because their bodies are lacking the proper amount of rest and relaxation needs to stay healthy.

If students are sleep deprived and waking up late for school, they are also more likely to miss breakfast and have to buy food at school which opens up to a whole new problem. Now, students are going to school hungry which adds on to the lack of focus in class, and they have to spend money on food at school which could be used elsewhere on something more important.

“Waking up can sometimes be a hassle, you forget to grab breakfast, and then you have to buy breakfast and buy my lunch at school which is money spent in a situation that could be prevented,” said senior Max Sanchez.

According to the sleep foundation, students should be getting, on average, 8 to 10 hours of sleep to be able to concentrate and function well in school.